Classic Flicks: Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

By Joseph Allencherril     8/24/11 7:00pm

The first film to win all five of the major Academy Awards (Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay and Best Picture) was Frank Capra's still-fresh screwball comedy It Happened One Night in 1934. It would be more than four decades before Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest pulled off this same fantastic feat in 1975. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest is the film that converted me from a 2000s-film lover to pre-1980s-film seeker. Prior to seeing the film, I had an unfair prejudice toward films not made during my lifetime; if a movie had not been made in the '90s or '00s, I thought it impossible for it to make me laugh or to even keep my attention for more than eight minutes.

But One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest was entirely different. Never had I laughed so much during a movie; I simply did not want the movie to end. Based on Ken Kesey's bestselling 1962 novel of the same name, the action is set in the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, Oregon. I mean this quite literally, since the movie was actually shot at location of the novel's setting. The protagonist, Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson, The Shining), is serving a short sentence for statutory rape when he is transferred to a mental institution for evaluation. By serving the rest of his sentence in the mental institution, he is avoiding the less relaxing environment of jail; however, he is not truly mentally ill.

The ward is run by the resolute Nurse Mildred Ratched (Louise Fletcher, Cruel Intentions), who employs unpleasant medical treatments and a mind-numbing daily routine to suppress and treat her patients. McMurphy finds that they are more fearful of Ratched than they are focused on becoming functional in the outside world. McMurphy establishes himself immediately as the leader of his ward. His fellow patients include the stuttering young Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif, Fading of the Cries), the childish-tempered Charlie Cheswick (Sydney Lassick, Carrie), the delusional Martini (Danny DeVito, Twins), the paranoid and educated Dale Harding (William Redfield, A New Leaf), the belligerent and profane Taber (Christopher Lloyd, Back to the Future) and "Chief" Bromden (Will Sampson, Orca), the deaf mute six-foot-seven Native American.

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McMurphy and Ratched's battle of wills escalates rapidly. When McMurphy wins everyone's ration of cigarettes in a poker game, Ratched confiscates and redistributes them. McMurphy calls for votes on ward policy changes to challenge her. He makes a show of betting the other patients he can escape by lifting an old hydrotherapy console — a massive marble plumbing fixture — off the floor and sending it through the window; when he fails to do so, he turns to them and says, "But I tried goddammit. At least I did that."

In any movie store, you would almost certainly find One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in the drama section. Forget The Hangover; I had never seen something so old that was so hilarious. However, today, I still think that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the funniest film I have ever seen; it's certainly one of the best dark comedies preserved on celluloid. I think it is a grave error among critics that the film is rarely praised for its humor. Maybe that is just because some people believe that it is insensitive to laugh during a film where the entirety of the action takes place in a psychiatric institution.

If One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest — an "old" movie — was so good, how many other "old" movies might be overlooked? Unfortunately, many so-called movie lovers claim to hate black and white films. The lack of success of independent film theaters (like the recently closed Angelika Theater downtown) is a testament to this sad unpopularity.

Ken Kesey reportedly didn't like Forman's film adaptation of his novel. I suppose this means that Kesey may have also suffered from poor cinematic taste.

Joseph Allencherril is a Will Rice ?College senior. Classic Flicks is a column reexamining and rediscovering the best that cinema has to offer.

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